‘Unmistakably a book by a feminist’: Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip and its feminist contexts

Abstract

For Sue King, writing in Vashti, the journal of Melbourne Women’s Liberation, Helen Garner’s book Monkey Grip (1977)—like some other critics, she stopped short of calling it a novel—was clearly a feminist read. Nora, she observed, is ‘not overtly “political” in the sense of working for political change on the macro level, or even consistently working out the politics of everything that happens to her’. Nor can she, as a denizen of a ‘rather strange sub-culture’ be properly described as an ‘everywoman’. Yet for King, Nora was also ‘clearly recognisable as a woman whose central identity is her own’. ‘It’s just so nice’, she enthused, ‘to read a story where no one is married or wants to be; where people may on occasion be jealous or dependent, yet feel no entitlement to do so’. King devoured the book in 24 hours, but while her review came with a strong personal recommendation, she did wonder whether anyone beyond ‘an arty little sub group’ would relate to it. She concluded on a note of uncertainty: ‘is this something we have to pass through on the way to ... ?’1